Birthright

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Kray scoured the city for hours. Judging by street signs and the names of some of the businesses, he and Alex were somewhere in Albany, New York. He hadn't popped them into some random part of the country. He'd been here before. This location had been one of his and his fellow prisoners' harvesting routes, as they'd called it. Metas had driven them up and down I-87 more times than he could count while they used trackers to locate clusters of leftover Sen that could be extracted from the environment.

He crossed a graveyard-still highway and came across the Hudson River, where he dunked himself to cool off after the long trek under the hot Wasteland sun. His watch said it was four hours since he'd left Alex in that home in the suburbs. If he headed farther south toward Lincoln Park, he'd run into a local Sanser gang.

The Crimson Gang, they called themselves. He didn't know if it was because red was the Sanser color, or if they just liked spilling blood. Probably the latter. Young or old, male or female—they didn't discriminate. Set foot on their turf and blood would start flowing.

The only people they didn't touch were Metas, which would explain why the ANEF left them alone. Or maybe they didn't kill Metas because there was a truce between them. Kray suspected they existed to dissuade Sansers from trying to run off into the Wasteland. The fear of unknown gangs had been another thing that had kept Kray in line for two years.

Now he was desperate. He was tired and hungry and overheated: it wouldn't be long before his body gave out. And he couldn't let that happen. Not if he wanted to save himself—and Alex. At the thought of her, a scowl carved deep into his features.

He began walking toward Crimson territory. He wasn't planning to confront them. Alerting them to his presence would be a death sentence, so instead he kept close to the crumbling buildings as he crept alongside dusty streets, his eyes and ears on alert.

Voices alerted him to the presence of people. A man was talking to another in a hushed but excited tone. Kray brushed up against a low building and peeked around a corner. Three men stood in front of a high rise, standing casually with guns strapped to their backs and waists.

Guns were outlawed in the Mainland and Skads. There were barely any left over from the age when the Meta Faction swept through the whole country and destroyed them. They did so because bullets could penetrate a Meta's or Sanser's body, but they could be deflected by a Sanser's shield. And since Metas couldn't create Sen shields, gunfire was dangerous to them.

And here these men were, flaunting their weapons out in public. Kray wouldn't be surprised if the ANEF themselves had armed them.

He peered up at the residential building behind them. Clothes were hanging from a couple of balconies. His stomach grumbled at the thought of finding food somewhere in there. It took every ounce of discipline to turn and disappear into the music store behind him. Old CDs and records crunched beneath his boots as he walked up a set of stairs and into a small office. The cracked window gave him a view of the men.

He sat at the desk and waited. Five minutes. Ten. Fifty. What the hell could they be talking about for this long? Finally, one of them chuckled and began walking down the street.

"Where are you off to, Hobbes?" another hollered as he strolled after him. "Maria's got you on a short leash, does she?"

The third joined them. They traded insults and laughed as they disappeared into another building. Kray waited five minutes before he rushed outside and darted into the residential building. The interior was as dilapidated as the outside. The walls were smudged with dried brown blood and marked with violent graffiti that declared this Crimson territory. He avoided stepping on the bottles and plastic wrappers littering the floor, relieved that some of the garbage was the remains of food.